Comments about oreilly Programming Flex 2:

This is a good book for beginners. You will learn how to create a layout, working with UI components, transitions/effects, data, components, appearance...

If you already know the basics/intermediate and wanna go really deep in Flex, this book might not be a good idea. Overall the book is good and easy to understand with examples.

Will be better if they could put more pictures (print-screens) though.

Other than that I like it, was helpful book.

Comments about oreilly Programming Flex 2:

I can't see how the criticism of how the example files are named chaps this person so much. If you're looking at the code examples in the book, the example file names are sensible enough.

I do agree, however, that some more consistent name correlation would have been easy to do and very useful: either print the literal filename in the book with each example, or name the files based on the section they illustrate.

Otherwise, I found the examples to be very useful, and the book was a primary resource for me to learn Flex starting from zero.

One thing that would have been helpful for me is a half a chapter dedicated to fundamental concepts of OOP. I suggest you go elsewhere first and study fundamental OOP concepts before tackling Flex. There is almost no finger hold available on Flex that does not require a conceptual understanding of OOP.

Comments about oreilly Programming Flex 2:

I was happy to find the code examples as well, but was irritated at how they are organized. The code examples come in the format of an archive of text files. Each text file is not named according to the chapter, section as you would expect, or even as Example 8-14 or something else useful. Instead, they have titled each file with the subject of the example, that may or may not have any correlation to the section of the book. The result is that it is very difficult to locate an example from the book. The book is great, but making the code examples so inaccessible is a real problem.

Comments about oreilly Programming Flex 2:

You want to become a master of Flex? You don't know where to start? "Programming Flex2" by Chafic Kazoun and Joey Lott is the right book for that..

Inside this book you will find everything about MXML and ActionScript3, how to gain deeper knowledge in Flex 2 Framework and Flex Builder 2. You can find excellent introduction of core of the Flash Player, Action Script Virtual machine (AVM2) and Framework Fundamentals. Chapter 15 is like a window for understanding ",how Flex works at a more fundamental level" and basic MXML application startup event flow., relationship between the Flex framework and Flash Player., application domains and preloader.

The authors don't miss anything that beginner or developer needs for building his application and explain many mechanisms for performing application layout rapidly and efficiency. Also they cover advanced components techniques like adding pop ups, managing the cursor, adding drag and drop behavior, customizing list-based components, focus management and keyboard controls. If you want to gain deeper imagination in the power of Flash Player in adding images, animations, video and audio you have to look at the Chapter 9, where you can find all necessary codes for loading, embedding and streaming video or audio in Flex applications.

The book is written in flexible manner and includes all the tools to manage all features of application. The book "Programming Flex 2" not only for beginners but also for Flex developer masters.

Order "Programming Flex2" by Chafic Kazoun and Joey Lott just now! In the short time you will learn how to: build, deploy and debug rich internet applications, use the powerful MXML language to lay out applications, update your applications in real time, build custom UI components with MXML and ActionScript, connect to live data via XML, SOAP=based Web services and Remoting.

Comments about oreilly Programming Flex 2:

To get the code examples, go to this page: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596526894/index.html (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596526894/index.html) . Yeah, I know... literally "this" page. Under the sub heading "Post-purchase Benefits" click on the "Examples" link where you can download a zip with the examples.

Comments about oreilly Programming Flex 2:

The book is structured to gradually exposure the reader to Flex programming. Since I was pretty new to using Flex, I found it rewarding to just read straight through chapter-by-chapter. The book is written such that it doesn't assume that the reader has had any exposure to Flash-based programming. If you have had any experience with other object-oriented programming languages then you should feel right at home programming with Flex 2. I did find it useful to have some familiarity with web technologies like HTML, XML, and Javascript.

The authors don't waste a lot of time getting right to the interesting parts of Flex: there are the obligatory pages about the history of Flex, and a section of how to go about downloading and setting up the development environment, but by these are short and concise. I also find it refreshing that the book doesn't assume that you will be using FlexBuilder (Adobe's for-pay Eclipse-based development environment), and they give equal treatment to those who are developing Flex applications using the free Flex 2 SDK.

The book had a basic introduction to ActionScript, which is the scripting language that Flex uses, but by the time I had read about half-way through the book, the Actionscript code samples were starting to get pretty involved. Fortunately the descriptions of what the code was doing were clear and the program flow was pretty easy to follow. Learning Actionscript is a topic that could fill its own book, so the authors had a deliberately narrow focus on exposing enough Actionscript to make it possible to learn Flex. Once you are done with this book, you will probably want to pick up a good book on ActionScript to expand your understanding.

The book also has a very well-written chapter on accessing remote data services using HTTP and Web Services. This is where having some experience with setting up Web Servers and doing some server-side programming really came in handy. Compared to the other chapters of the book which felt more or less like a tutorial, this chapter seemed to come the closest to presenting the true power behind using Flex as a Rich Internet Application framework. Sadly, the chapter was rather short and I found myself wishing that there was more on this topic.

One small complaint I have about the book was that it didn't appear that any of the example code was available on-line. The book lists a URL that claims to have example code, but that only gives an error when you type it in the browser. When you do manage to find the page by searching on the O`Reilly website, there doesn't appear to be any download links for the book. Not that this was a huge problem: even though XML tends to be very verbose, I was happy to see that for the most part the authors were able to keep their example code snippets relatively small and it was pretty trivial to type them in myself. It might just be that Flex is so expressive or that there is really good library support, but I didn't feel too inconvenienced by not having access to the source code.

Overall I was pleased with this book. It is difficult to cover a topic like Flex, MXML and Actionscript in a scant 450 or so pages, but the author's definitely seem to have covered the basics. After reading the book I found myself wanting to do more with Flex 2 and wanting to learn more about Actionscript.

If you are newcomer to the world of Flash programming and want to see what the future of the Flash platform is, then I heartily recommend this book. If you are already savvy with Actionscript (the version that Flex 2 supports is 3.0) then you may still find some value in this book due to its' coverage of MXML and theFlexBuilder toolset.

Comments about oreilly Programming Flex 2:

Good book, just started reading it however they forgot to include a download link or CD for the sample code in the book!!